A behemoth office tower that may rise
opposite Pennsylvania Station would deface New York City’s
skyline and cast a pall over surrounding streets already
shortchanged on light and air.

Vornado Realty Trust’s 15 Penn Plaza will stack as much as
2.83 million square feet on a site that was zoned to accommodate
just 1.6 million square feet.

The tower tapers only slightly as it rises about 1,200 feet
-- the height of the Empire State Building -- dwarfing two
massive cookie-cutter residential towers to the south that are a
sad legacy of Manhattan’s recent housing boom.

Stroll along the jammed sidewalks of West 32nd Street or
West 33rd, east of Seventh Avenue, breathing in the diesel
exhaust of idling trucks and buses. The blank walls of a
multilevel retail mall or the blank wall of several massive
trading floors -- depending on the tenant mix -- will line half
the length of the block.

Scoops, Freebies

How did this thing get so huge?

Vornado controls the entire block, and so it has made the
tower bigger by scooping up unused zoning square footage from
the site of the careworn Manhattan Mall that occupies the Sixth
Avenue side, and piled it onto the tower site.

In addition, the city has allowed a further free 270,000
square feet of development rights.

Should the tower be built -- that depends on getting enough
tenants to sign on in advance -- the rest of us would be gifted
with somewhat enlarged and less dingy subway stairs, among
several modest transit improvements for which officials granted
Vornado 474,000 additional square feet.

There’s no space for what could be a real amenity on this
unpleasant street: a plaza. Instead, we get minor widening of
some of the city’s most overcrowded sidewalks.

High Ceilings

For all its great height, 15 Penn contains only 67 stories.
Some are tall to accommodate trading floors as large as 70,000
square feet at the base and even office floors are 14 feet apart
(compared with the old standard of 11.5).

The hoped-for financial-industry tenants (in palmier days
Merrill Lynch) want to pack staffers tightly into large floors
ranging up to 34,000 square feet. High ceilings are essential to
avoid claustrophobia.

That’s good for tenants, but a super-tall building owes the
skyline an expression of New York City’s optimism and energy. A
soaring landmark has cash value, too, though Vornado, large and
experienced as it is, can’t seem to calculate it.

Vornado justified the great size of an earlier incarnation
of the tower because it would contribute millions to overhaul
the grim overcrowded maze that is Penn Station. Several other
similarly over-scaled developments proposed nearby make the same
argument. However, the Penn project remains in limbo.

Hudson River Tunnel

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s absurd cancellation of
the Hudson River tunnel may well repel investment on both sides
of the river, as it makes long-term congestion appear
unsolvable.

So chances are commuters will fight their way through even
larger Penn Station crowds or into the eternally embarrassing
Madison Square Garden sports arena.

Latent in Pelli’s design is a better tower. If its recesses
were deepened and its bulk slimmed it could come alive on the
skyline.

A no-aspiration mood has prevailed around Penn Station
since its tragic 1960s rebuilding. What should be a great
neighborhood has been an also-ran too long.

The 500,000 daily travelers can’t get away from the sordid
surroundings fast enough.

The 15 Penn tower is important enough to change that
dynamic if Vornado decides to care.

(James S. Russell writes on architecture for Muse, the arts
and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column:
James S. Russell in New York at
jamesrussell@earthlink.net.